Over the past month, the state and city legislatures have passed laws, and the courts have issued decisions, on lead paint, rent regulation and homeless shelters that could alter the housing rights of many New Yorkers.
Homeless Shelter Requirements
In 1981, a court decree mandated that New York City provide shelter to anyone who needed it. The city has since sought to define more precisely and, in some ways, to limit this duty. Their efforts have often conflicted with the demands of advocates for the homeless.
On the issue of shelter eligibility requirements for homeless single adults, a state appellate court recently ruled in favor of the city. The court decided that the Department of Homeless Services can ask shelter seekers to submit to financial and psychological assessments and can expect them to cooperate with therapies that will help them become self-sufficient. Homeless adults must also look for and accept placement in permanent housing when possible. Those who do not comply could be evicted from the shelter system.
The court ruled that the city can establish “ reasonable standards to ensure that homeless individuals be required to take steps to achieve self-sufficiency and to reduce their reliance on temporary shelter.”
The city had argued that disruptive and uncooperative behavior made shelters dangerous and scared other eligible adults away. But advocates for the homeless have said that harsh rules would force the most dysfunctional adults out of the shelter system and onto the streets.
Keeping the Regulations, But Not The Rent
Tenants in rent-regulated apartments recently got word that their rents can go up 4.5 percent for one-year leases, or 7.5 percent for two-year leases, for lease renewals on or after October 1.
The city’s Rent Guidelines Board dropped a percentage point apiece off of their preliminary proposal for rent increase allowances of 5.5 and 8.5 percent, to the disappointment of landlords who claimed their costs had been soaring. Tenants had countered that their apartments were becoming unaffordable, and while they were grateful for the board’s decision to lower the proposed increases, they still raged against the highest allowable increases since 1989.
The board also announced the allowable increases for leases of loft tenants and those who occupy single-room occupancy buildings.
Just days after the Rent Guidelines Board reached its decision, the state legislature weighed in on the long-term prospects for rent regulation. The 1997 rent regulations expired on June 15th, and after long nights of negotiation that went nowhere, and a number of short-term extensions of the laws, the legislature agreed to extend the laws without major changes through 2011.
The Republican-led State Senate had the upper hand in the negotiations, forcing the Democrat-heavy State Assembly to either sign onto their bill, or allow rent regulation to evaporate entirely. While (as Gotham Gazette has written) tenant advocates had been hoping for alterations to the 1997 laws that would have saved apartments from deregulation once their maximum allowable rent reached $2000 per month, that provision remained. Tenants decried the decision, and said that it would lead to the deregulation of hundreds of thousands of apartments over the next ten years. Apartments have been leaving regulation, and will continue to do so, due to the high rent vacancy provision, though the exact pace of the change is hard to pin down.
Lead Laws
Tenants finally won one fight, when in early July, the State Court of Appeals invalidated a city law that required the removal of lead paint in apartments housing children aged five or younger. That 1999 law was very controversial (as Gotham Gazette has written), having replaced an earlier law that required lead paint removal if apartments had children aged 6 or younger. The court’s decision reinstated the earlier law, and wider protections for young children in homes filled with lead paint.
Lead from paint can cause numerous health problems in all people, but especially in young children. For them, lead exposure has been linked to damage to the brain and nervous system, behavior and learning problems, slowed growth, hearing problems, and headaches.
Other possible legislative changes to housing in New York City will probably not materialize until after a summer hiatus. That is a good thing, because many New Yorkers may need some time to come to terms with the recent alterations to the rules that govern the way we live.
UNLIKELY ALLIANCE WINS APPRENTICESHIPS FOR PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENTS
After three years, an unlikely alliance of public housing residents and several building trades unions have won a significant victory. The New York City Housing Authority has agreed that $600 million of construction work in public housing over the next three years will be built by union contractors. At present, almost none of the housing authority's work is built with union labor. In exchange, the carpenters, painters, laborers, and plumbers have agreed to hire approximately 220 residents of public housing during each of those years. In addition, the housing authority has increased enforcement of "Section 3" requirements - a section of the Housing & Urban Development Act of 1968 which requires that federal public housing funds be used to hire local residents and subcontractors - for contractors working on public housing.
Like many community activists in African-American and Latino neighborhoods, many public housing resident leaders have had a strong sense of the historic racism in the construction unions. And in neighborhoods like Harlem, there is a significant history of overlap between public housing resident organizing and groups like Harlem Fightback, which led the effort to open up the unions.
But over the past several years, these groups have found common cause, as part of a coalition called TRADES - Trade Unions and Residents for Apprenticeship Development and Economic Success - originally created as part of the Alliance for a Working Economy, and now a campaign housed at New York Jobs With Justice, a labor/community coalition. The trades unions have long been shut out of almost all of the construction paid for by the New York City Housing Authority. Workers on these federally-funded projects are supposed to be paid the "prevailing wage" - locally-calculated wages which are several dollars above minimum wage and which often match the union scale. However, because there is little enforcement on many publicly-subsidized projects, the unions documented pervasive prevailing wage violations on housing authority jobs.
Residents were equally upset about the housing authority's failure to insure the implementation of the Section 3 requirements. At a City Council hearing in 2001, residents documented job after job with no resident employment. Driven by these common interests, union leaders (especially from the Carpenters, Laborers, and Painters Unions) and public housing leaders - including leaders from the NYC Public Housing Residents Alliance and from Public Housing Residents of the Lower East Side (affiliated with the community organization, Good Old Lower East Side) - worked over several years to overcome differences and build a strong alliance. In August of 2001, the groups together led a rally of 2,000 people over the Brooklyn Bridge to a housing authority hearing. After this, the housing authority began meeting with TRADES representatives in 2002, under the new leadership of Chair Tino Hernandez and General Manager Douglas Apple.
The TRADES Coalition is still, in many ways, a fragile one. While the New York City Housing Authority has reached an agreement with the building trades unions for the $600million contract, public housing leaders in the TRADES Coalition remain frustrated that they were not at the table as well. But residents credit the Carpenters for bringing the housing authority's proposal back to the full group, and the unions have agreed to residents' requests for a specific target for public housing residents hired on these jobs. Public housing residents are looking forward to the jobs that will be created. The building trades unions hope this will be a model for other publicly-subsidized construction work which is currently non-union. And Jobs With Justice (TRADES' sponsoring organization) hopes that if alliances can be built between trades unions and public housing residents, many more labor-community partnerships are possible.
MIXED REACTIONS ON THE BROOKLYN WATERFRONT
Following upon recently approved rezonings for Park Slope and East Harlem, the New York City Department of City Planning released its initial rezoning plans for the Greenpoint/Williamsburg waterfront earlier this month - to a mixed reaction in the community. City Planning's proposal includes an enormous upzoning of the waterfront, currently zoned for manufacturing use with buildings one to three stories tall, to allow for the construction of residential towers up to 30 stories tall. The plan preserves manufacturing or mixed-use zones in many areas, although it reflects a significant reduction of the land reserved for manufacturing. And it would provide for public access to the waterfront and "contextual zoning" -- zoning with height limits and appropriate features to fit into the existing residential communities (see Rezoning the Williamsburg and Greenpoint Waterfronts)
Neighborhood activists - especially those in the Greenpoint/Williamsburg Waterfront Task Force, a coalition of over 70 community organizations - were pleased last month when the Bloomberg administration announced it would oppose the 1,100 megawatt TransGas power plant on the Williamsburg waterfront (although this is not the death knell for the power plant, which could still be sited there despite the City's opposition).
The New York Times reported nearly universal support for the city's plan (City Seeking to Rezone Brooklyn Waterfront, June 19, 2003) and there is certainly support amongst many residents for the outlines of the plan. But community organizations and residents are far more mixed than has been suggested.
Some are opposed to the height limits proposed for the waterfront, believing that 15 - 30 story towers are out of scale with a community where most buildings are four stories are fewer. Other groups, including Neighbors Against Garbage and the New York Industrial Retention Network, are concerned that the plan undermines the viability of manufacturing in the community, despite the carve-outs for many existing manufacturers (see Zoning to Kill Manufacturing, and the Assault on Greenpoint, the May Gotham Gazette Land Use column , and Zoning to Protect Manufacturing).
Perhaps the most common concern is that, despite repeated use of the words "affordable housing" in City Planning's presentation, the rezoning is likely to lead to housing that is far beyond the reach of most community residents. The vast majority of the "upzoning" is along the waterfront, where apartments in residential towers with Manhattan views will fetch prices well over $2,000 per month. City Planning is proposing that developers be allowed to build the large towers "as of right," with no requirements or zoning incentives for affordable housing. They claim developers will choose voluntarily to apply for programs as part of the mayor's "New Marketplace" housing plan. But developers will receive a 15 year tax exemption, even if they build luxury housing. Many community organizations in the area - including St. Nicholas Neighborhood Preservation Corporation, Los Sures, Neighbors Against Garbage, and a clergy coalition led by Neil Sheehan - are calling for more aggressive efforts to ensure that a meaningful portion of the new housing built is affordable to local residents. Local City Councilmember David Yassky has called for "inclusionary zoning," which would allow developers who create affordable housing to build larger buildings than those who don't (see Waterfront Housing for Everyone, by David Yassky, and Inclusionary Zoning, and Tool for Low-Income Housing). Yassky writes:
"Once again, the city is helping developers who will see the value of their property skyrocket. I propose, in the future, requiring these developers to commit to making 20 percent of new residential construction affordable for a typical family in the development neighborhood. Unused manufacturing land represents some of the last stretches of vacant land in the city. Unless the city intervenes, there is no guarantee that any low and moderate income New Yorkers will be able to live in any of the thousands of new apartments developed on these vast tracts. We cannot afford to ignore this opportunity to build affordable housing. The residents of New York City, not just the wealthy ones, deserve a chance to reap the benefits from the development of the Brooklyn waterfront."
City Planning's proposal still has a long road ahead. The Environmental Impact Statement is in the works, and City Planning hopes to certify the plan by the end of the year, after which there is a six month process of hearings before the plan goes to the City Council.
PUTTING NEIGHBORHOOD PLANNING BACK INTO HOUSING
In July, the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) will announce a reorganization, establishing a high-profile Division of Neighborhood Planning as part of its Office of Development. Ironically, it is largely the need to respond to a revitalized real estate market that has led to the need for enhanced neighborhood planning capacity. For the past decade, most of HPD's work in neighborhoods has consisted of turning city-owned, abandoned housing stock (taken by the city for non-payment of taxes) over to for-profit and not-for-profit developers, or to the tenants. This did not generally require a broader look at the neighborhoods, since the department was the primary owner of the buildings being transferred and renovated.
But the city has stopped taking over property through tax foreclosure, and abandonment is down significantly from the 1970s and 1980s. This presents a challenge for the department in implementing Mayor Bloomberg's housing plan, The New Housing Marketplace (in pdf format), which was announced last December. (See Gotham Gazette's critique of the plan.) Land and property to develop as affordable housing has become far more scarce. So Housing Preservation and Development is establishing a new planning unit to work with community organizations and developers to package sites. This involves not only looking at general uses, but in reaching out to many significant landowners, both public (New York City Housing Authority, NYC Department of Education, Health & Hospitals Corporation) and private (Catholic Charities, hospitals, etc). HPD will then work with communities and developers to identify and assemble parcels for the development of affordable housing under the mayor's plan.
Brad Lander is the executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, a community development organization in Brooklyn.
For more than six months, Gene Garvin has been wearing earplugs to bed and setting out traps for mice. Like many New Yorkers, he has problems in his apartment, a two-bedroom on Manhattan Avenue near Morningside Park.
With a stack of papers laid out on a table recently, Garvin described his largely fruitless efforts to have his landlord fix the water heater and exterminate the vermin. A list of dates detailed dozens of calls to the landlord that began in October 2002. He complained to the city's department of Housing Preservation and Development. By February, Garvin started holding the rent, a typical tenant response.
"We just couldn't put up with it anymore, and nothing was happening," he explained.
The landlord responded in typical fashion, too: His attorneys filed a non-payment case against Garvin.
Non-payment cases dominate in Housing Court, making up more than 80 percent of the more than 300,000 cases filed every year. But the court was originally established in 1973 to hear cases brought by tenants to force landlords to repair and maintain services in their buildings, so-called Housing Part actions.
A new study shows at least partly why tenants file so few Housing Part actions: Housing Court is too slow in forcing landlords to fix things and the process of filing the cases is too arduous for tenants. Most people just hold the rent, like Garvin.
And the number of cases filed is sure to decline even further,as more and more apartments are deregulated in New York City – a likely consequence of the rent regulation laws passed by the New York State Legislature late last week. When an apartment is covered by the rent regulation laws, landlords are required to offer tenants renewal leases. But landlords are under no obligation to offer a renewal lease to tenants in unregulated or deregulated apartments. Many tenants simply will not file a lawsuit for repairs and services if they think they’ll have to leave -- or be forced to leave -- when their lease is up. Although laws to protect tenants from retaliatory evictions exist, in practice they rarely work for tenants.
"No Rainbow, No Gold: Tenant-Initiated Housing Part Actions in New York City," (in pdf format) the new report on tenant complaints, written by the City Wide Task Force on Housing Court, where I work, reveals that tenants endured substantial delays in getting inspections and resolving cases, that landlords were rarely fined for noncompliance with the city's housing maintenance codes, and that violations were often not repaired even after more than two years had passed.
The city and state must act to correct the problems in Housing Court. These cases are taking months to resolve. Justice delayed is justice denied. The delays, lack of fines and lack of repairs mean thousands of New Yorkers are living in miserable and, above all, unsafe housing.
More than half of all rental apartments in the city have at least one violation of the city's Housing Maintenance Code, according to the Census Bureau's Housing Vacancy Survey. But that number is likely higher because the Census Bureau's survey does not ask about every type of violation.
Every year, tenants file about 10,000 cases in the city's Housing Court to force landlords to make necessary repairs. Broken locks, leaking pipes, peeling paint, exposed wiring-the problems run the gamut from mundane to life threatening. Even for violations deemed hazardous - violations that landlords must rectify within 24 hours - we found that tenants waited up to two weeks before the court heard the case.
A Housing Part action also automatically makes Department of Housing Preservation and Development a party to the case that a tenant files. But the agency's attorneys only get involved if the landlord has repeatedly violated the Housing Maintenance Code.
In our report, we recommend that the court reduce the time necessary for court-ordered inspections, particularly in cases where tenants allege hazardous conditions. The report also recommends that landlords face fines more frequently. Landlords faced fines in just two percent of cases initiated by tenants.
Tenants and their advocates have long complained that the court does little to enforce the city's Housing Maintenance Code and instead acts as a collection service for landlords seeking overdue rent.
In Gene Garvin's case, that seemed to be the case. Lately, he said, he's been trying peanut butter on the mousetraps and thinking about putting a wall around his water heater himself - an improvement Judge Ernest Cavallo ordered his landlord to do three months ago.
Joe Lamport is the assistant director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court a coalition of community housing organizations.